Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Last week, German Minister of Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock became the latest in a long line of Western diplomats dispatched to Beirut, in an attempt to wrestle with the Rubik’s Cube that is Lebanese politics. And like many before her, she wasn’t able to align the squares either.
“Lebanon is on the brink of collapse,” Baerbock intoned on arrival, underlining that the war between Israel and Hezbollah could “be fatal for the most religiously diverse society of all states in the Middle East.”
Indeed, it could be — and the Lebanese know that better than anyone.
However, one of their biggest exasperations — aside from the ongoing ground invasion in the south, and Hezbollah’s role in bringing yet another war crashing down on their heads — is Western policymakers (and Israel) trying to strong-arm them into hasty political reform.
As it stands, such a reform process could only start with the appointment of a president — a position that’s been vacant for more than two years because of sectarian political wrangling and Hezbollah vetoes.
A president committed to restoring state authority could set Lebanon on a new course to fundamentally change and repair its political system, which has left sectarian-based political parties — especially the Iran-backed Shiite movement Hezbollah — stronger than the country’s hollowed out state institutions.
In Western policy circles, the favored candidate to manage such a shift is General Joseph Aoun — a Maronite Catholic who has been commander-in-chief of the 80,000-strong Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) since 2017. The LAF is seen as the country’s most representative and capable national institution, and is highly respected across Lebanon’s internal fault lines.
Moreover, the no-nonsense Aoun has much to recommend him. A career officer, he steadily rose up the ranks since joining the army in 1983 and has rigorously maintained the LAF’s political neutrality. He also led the Dawn of the Hills campaign against the Islamic State in 2017, preventing jihadist spillover into Lebanon from the civil war raging in neighboring Syria.
For the West, the idea is that Aoun, or someone like him, could fix Lebanon’s moribund power-sharing political order — a system that was initially designed to keep the peace but is now paralyzing and entrapping the country. That would essentially mean clipping the Iran-backed Shiite movement’s political wings and insisting the Hezbollah militia disarms, so that the LAF remains the only armed force in Lebanon.
And with Hezbollah decapitated by assassinations, reeling from the blows dealt by Israel, now is the time to grasp the nettle, Western policymakers say.
“What we want to see come out of this situation, ultimately, is Lebanon able to break the grip that Hezbollah has had on the country — more than a grip, break the stranglehold that Hezbollah has had on the country and remove [the] Hezbollah veto over a president,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller earlier this month.
But while the Lebanese also sense that an opportunity for reform has now arisen, it isn’t all that simple — as even ardent Hezbollah critics have been laboring to explain.
According to one such critic, the Carnegie Middle East Center’s Michael Young, “only a consensual solution to Lebanon’s latest crisis will ensure the country doesn’t risk another sectarian conflict.” And to that end, carefully managing what’s shaping up to be Hezbollah’s defeat by Israel is essential, he told POLITICO.
Lebanon’s heavily armed Shiites — which make up around a third of the population — have been dislocated, dazed and traumatized by this latest war and Hezbollah’s colossal setbacks, Young said. Moreover, with Israel’s assassinations of veteran Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and his expected successor Hashem Safieddine, the Shiite movement lacks an experienced enough leader to control and direct their anger and sense of humiliation.
Young believes that compounding that humiliation at this stage would be a grave error. Trying to dictate a new political reality and substantially reduce Hezbollah’s power too quickly risks civil war. “Major decisions, when not taken by consensus in Lebanon, tend to generate sectarian conflict,” he warned.
Indeed, Lebanon’s modern history has followed this well-worn pattern. Sectarian squabbles between the country’s major sects — Shia, Sunni, Christian and Druze — have erupted into violent quarrels that rage until painstaking compromises and settlements are reached. And in their efforts to manipulate the perennial dance of Lebanon’s sects for their own regional ambitions or narrow national interests, outside parties — whether Iran, Syria, Israel or the West — have often had a devastating impact on the country, complicating the tangle of its politics.
Dramatic nonconsensual change thus runs the risk of outsized, chaotic and deadly consequences.
Today, Lebanon is in particularly poor shape to cope with its current crisis. The country’s been limping on since its 2019 financial collapse, with 85 percent of the country below the poverty line even before Israel launched its ground incursion. And in 2020, Beirut was rocked by a massive port explosion, triggered by a huge amount of ammonium nitrate stored at a Hezbollah-controlled warehouse. The blast killed over 200 people, left 7,000 injured and caused $15 billion worth of property damage.
The very last thing this flailing country needs is another war. The question is, how does it get out of this mess?
The Lebanese are short on answers themselves, but they do know that much will depend on Israel’s intentions and when exactly it decides it has done enough to vanquish and degrade Hezbollah. Until then, the country is on pause, unable to move on, and has little agency to speak of, despite the clamor from outsiders to shape up and change.
The main fear is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s incursion won’t be as limited as he says and will morph into something else — much like Israel’s 1982 invasion — turning Gaza and Lebanon into open-ended “forever wars” where “total victory” remains elusive. Israel claims it’s only targeting Hezbollah personnel and its highly developed military infrastructure in the south. But it isn’t lost on the Lebanese that whole villages are being razed, with schools, health centers and municipal buildings struck and demolished.
So, is Israel intentionally setting out to make large swathes of southern Lebanon uninhabitable, turning it into a no-man’s-land to prevent Hezbollah’s return? Does it plan to make the south totally sterile to maintain control? On Saturday, senior Israeli military officials assured Israel’s Kan 11 radio that the ground offensive was reaching its “final phase” and will be completed in a week or two. They said their attention will then shift toward villages below Mount Hermon on the eastern side of the border.
But some have doubts. Hezbollah’s still mounting resistance and firing rockets into northern and central Israel. And until those cross-border salvos stop, Israel won’t pull out.
“There are no positive signs that the Israeli aggression against Lebanon will stop,” said Lebanese Minister of Energy and Water Walid Fayad in an interview. He worries there’s an “expansionist” project behind the invasion, and that it will be carried out “at the cost of the death of all peoples, their displacement and the destruction of … everything that symbolizes life.”
Twenty percent of Lebanon’s population is now displaced; schools, church facilities and mosque compounds are crammed; and makeshift tent camps have spread across the country. And while this war rages on, it reduces Lebanon’s chance of becoming a nation with a functioning government and a new set of political ground rules to move it forward.